EliGe at BLAST Bounty: “I would say that our goal is to have more consistency as, like, a playoff team”

Team Liquid are off to a good start here at BLAST Bounty Winter 2026. Before the team went to pick their next opponent, I spoke to Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski about keeping Team Liquid’s roster stable in 2026, individual form and who they want to face next in Malta.

How are you doing today?

EliGe: Doing good. How about you?

Sophie: Yeah, not too bad. I’ve been asking everybody, because I heard yesterday the weather in Malta is real bad right now.

EliGe: Yeah, it’s definitely not the best. We came in and it’s just full. I don’t know how strong the winds were, but really strong winds. I felt like I was going to die on the plane. Like, when we were coming in, it was like the plane was doing like this. Well, I hope that we straighten out a little bit before this actually touches the floor. Yeah, raining hard, but yeah, at least we’re alive, so we’re doing good.

Sophie: Well, it’s off to a good start. Where did you fly in from?

EliGe: Warsaw.

Sophie: Ah, okay, cool. Not too long a flight, then. I guess it’s okay.

EliGe: Yeah, not too bad.

Sophie: Good, good. Okay, cool. So the very first thing I wanted to ask you was about how Liquid didn’t make any roster changes this year, which I think maybe surprised a couple of people.

What led to the decision to keep you guys all together with the exact same roster?

EliGe: Yeah, the decision is pretty much because we feel like we were on the right track at the end of last year, even though the Major result wasn’t the best. You know, the team needs, like, some type of stability, first of all, because from at least from my perspective, I’m obviously new to Liquid. I joined in September. But I think Liquid’s been a revolving door of roster change, roster change. Something’s not working. New thing, new thing. And you can’t really create any structure. There’s no stability for anybody, really. So I think it’s really hard when you have a revolving door like that.

And then the second part is what I was saying before of, you know, we felt like we were on the right track of, you know, how we’re approaching the game, how we’re adding things and improving things, team environment, everything like that. And we have, like, very talented players. It’s just about making sure that we’re getting things, like, on the same page with that structure. And we feel like we’re making steps forward. So I think that as long as, like, we’re continuing to make steps forward and that’s how we felt like at the end of last season, even, you know, we didn’t make it out of the Legend stage like we would have wanted to at the Major, which obviously is a bad result. Like, we went 0-3 [in stage 3] and we’re not denying that, but, you know, I think just having some stability for the team and feeling like we’re working on things and we have, like, strong players that can, you know, do better than what we were doing before. And that’s pretty much the reason.

Sophie: Yeah, I kind of like that. Because I guess in esports, we see a lot of teams have got this revolving door, and I think it kind of makes it hard for fans as well. Like, if you’re a fan of a player as opposed to a team, it kind of makes it a bit more difficult.  Okay, cool. So, obviously, we’re just coming straight into the 2026 season.

How are you feeling about your own individual form? Because you came out of this, this first stage of last bounty with some really strong maps. It was really good to see

EliGe: Yeah, I’m feeling pretty good. I think that since, like, the year started individually, I was feeling really good. I feel like my mechanics are feeling good. I’m also feeling like I’m more in, like, a stable environment where I could, you know, do what I feel makes me perform the best. And I think that, like, we’re having good relationships on the team, which make things easier to talk about. And, yeah, I think just overall, everything’s feeling like, you know, I can get on track to the form that I had in 2024, 2023 before. So I’m feeling pretty good about that overall. So good starts the season.

Sophie: Yeah, definitely.

How do you guys maintain that level of communication? Is it a case of just sitting down and being like, right, here’s what worked, here’s what didn’t, or is there a little bit more to it than that?

EliGe: It’s pretty much a constant flow of communication. I mean, things are not always, you know, just like, a straight line up of things are going great, things are going good where we understand each other. It’s always, you know, peaks, troughs, you know, things people that we don’t like. We don’t get it. But there’s arguments, there’s days where things are going great, and we’re like, yep, that makes sense. We’re going to add this, add that, and then we, you know, go into the scrim, and then it feels really good.

So I think that there’s always, you know, good days, bad days. But the bad days are also the days where you learn a lot because you know, whenever there’s disagreements, that’s, you know, something that you can learn from, you’re going to go some direction, and that direction is either going to work, not work, you try another direction. So as long as, like, we are open to each other about what we want to do and like, what we can try, but there’s always also a baseline of, you know, we kind of have to keep on keeping the same, I guess, like, the foundation that we set. We don’t want to  veer from that too far as well. You want to like, stay in the same, like, confines that we want to be identified as like our team, like, structure. I guess. So that’s what I’d say.

Sophie: Yeah, for sure.

Would you say there’s things that you’re deliberately trying to work on coming into this new season specifically, or is it more like you’re trying to see what’s working and what isn’t as you go on?

EliGe: For me individually or for me or for, like, the team?

Sophie: Let’s do both.

EliGe: For me individually, it’s just, you know, keeping on top of different micros and adding things and feeling good about, like, my, because I honestly, I feel like my mechanics have always been really good. It would be more of, like, the you know, how comfortable I’m feeling in certain situations and how I want to, like, micro in those situations and like, my different options that I have. So I think that’s like, how I feel like the strongest, you know, doing like, my training routines. But that’s like a given. Like, that’s like the base. That’s like the bare minimum of, like, keeping up with that stuff. It’s always about the nuance of how you approach, like, different fights and when you’re in different situations, which fights you choose to take and stuff like that.

So that’s me individually and then as a team, we’ve mainly been like, focusing on the team structure of how we’re defaulting and approaching different rounds and doing that, like, throughout all the maps of like, how we want that to look, who, you know, how we’re gonna, like, you know, not feel as rigid.

Because I think one of the things that we felt at the end of last year is, like, we were a little bit more rigid with, like, how we were doing things. And we need to be able to, like, feel out more of, like, the situations, give, like, less sound cues of, you know, where we’re like less, less obvious things for like the opponent so like they don’t know as much what we’re doing. So we’re pretty much like structuring more of our rounds. So like we have like those options more often.

Sophie: Yeah, for sure. Because I guess as I say like it’s, it’s really starting to pay off. Early on in this season you guys did have a couple of little scares like dropping a map to NIP and to Gentle Mates I think it was.

Can you tell me a little bit about the lessons that you can take from those series specifically and how you’re planning to bring that into the playoffs?

EliGe: Well, I’d say for the Gentle Mates one I think that we played really good honestly on the second and third map. But on Inferno we did…we have had like some rule changes and there’s going to be like some learnings. Like for me I’m in like the more active, you know, banana spots of the map. I’ve never really played like there in like my career except like 2018 and before. So it’s been some time and it’s a really like difficult spot. So there’s gonna be like more nuanced ways of how I should be like approaching like that position and like finding solutions like in better ways because like I wasn’t you know, having good game on T side of that map. I didn’t know like solutions. It was like a frustrating game. So I think that was like you know, take away for that and being like more resilient as well. Those were like the key takeaways from like Gentle Mates for me.

And then the Nip game. Do you know which map we actually lost to them? Off the top of your head. I’m trying to remember myself.

Sophie: Oh, hang on. Bear with me one moment. Oh my gosh. This is a test. I can’t remember off the top of my head. Bear with me. I’ve got Liquipedia up in the background. Where are we? So this was. Okay, there’s Gentle Mates. Okay, so NIP took Mirage. It was map 13-8.

EliGe: I see, I see. I actually don’t know if there was some big takeaway. There’s always little micro decisions. Actually that was the map that we didn’t necessarily get to a lot of things from that. So it kind of accelerated when we needed to talk about that map right before because obviously we’re planning on picking it but we were focusing more on some of the other maps in our pool and I think it was just about like, talking about, like, the micro details about, like, the defaults, like I was saying before, of how we can activate and, like, feel a little bit better. Because I think that was when our T side was a little bit, like, we had a weak T side in that game, but honestly, I don’t think we had, like, a big takeaway from the.

Sophie: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess you can’t for every single game, right?

EliGe: Yeah, I mean, of course, like, we go over the game and there’s things that happen in the rounds that, like, we discussed. Discussed, but in terms of, like, some overall big takeaway that, like, we’re gonna put at the end of the storybook I don’t think that I have one for that game.

Sophie: Yep, yep. Yes, it was a 13-8 map, guys. We’ve got some big lessons with this one.

EliGe: Yeah. I mean, it could be. It could be, right? But like, I, at least I personally don’t remember it.

Sophie: Yeah, yeah, no, that is totally fine. Okay. So I guess, I think it’s later today. I’m not sure if you did already, but you guys are going to be picking your opponent for the next stage of Blast Bounty, right? And we’ve got some, I mean, it’s the biggest teams. We’ve got Vitality, we got FURIA out there.

Is there a team that you’re specifically keeping your eye on that you would enjoy going up against at this stage?

The FINAL EIGHT who are heading to Malta to battle for the BLAST Bounty trophy! 🏆 #BLASTPremier pic.twitter.com/wDcFxQxaBL

— BLAST Premier 💥 (@BLASTPremier) January 18, 2026

EliGe: Yeah, we definitely talked about it already of, like, who we would prefer to pick. And, I mean, it’s the pretty obvious one, I think, just because they’re having some unfortunate circumstances in their team right now with who can be here and who cannot be here.

Sophie: It’s the esports way.

EliGe: But yeah, we’re feeling good. I think we’re feeling good overall.

Sophie: Okay, good. That’s very good to hear. Okay, I just had one last question for you.

Just looking ahead a little bit, maybe six months into this year, where do you see liquid going in this first half of the season, especially heading up to the first major in Cologne?

EliGe: Yeah, I mean, I would say that our goal is to have more consistency as, like, a playoff team.

Of course, I would like to say the obvious, like, win tournaments, but I don’t think, you know, it obviously doesn’t happen overnight. Like, if it was that easy, everyone would just, you know, make a roster and they would all just be insane. They would just be like, yeah, let’s just win tournaments. And then just do it. They just win the tournaments. But for me, like, we need to have some obvious, like, steps forward where our baseline is much higher. Like, that’s what the fans want. We want to be, you know, going to the quarters and semi finals and at least be in the discussion for winning the tournament.

I don’t think that, you know, Liquid has been, like, in the discussion for winning the tournament in a while. Even leading up to the Major. My goal for the Major was to, you know, get to the playoffs, semi finals. And I, that’s still my goal, me, individually. We didn’t talk about this as a team or anything, is like, I would want this team to be, you know, in the quarters, in the semi finals, consistently be that team that’s in the discussion because that means we’re already at a pretty good baseline. Like, so that next up afterwards if you’re so far away that, you know, you’re not even making it to those stages, then you have other problems than, like, if you’re gonna win this trophy or not. You’re having problems. Like, you’re having way worse problems than that. So that’s what we want. Like, we need to. We need to be getting to that level. I mean, obviously, this tournament were technically playoffs, but, you know, we need to be doing that. I like the tournaments that have the harder formats that we would have already, like, playedsome harder teams by now. So that’s. That’s the goals.

Sophie: Yeah. Brilliant. Well, as I say, you’re off to a good start, and long may it continue.

EliGe: Thank you.

Sophie: Okay. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it, and good luck.

EliGe: Awesome. Thanks so much.

The BLAST Premier Bounty S1 is the second BLAST CS event hosted in Malta as part of their multi-year deal with GamingMalta.